NY Times' silence on Annan's Mercedes is telling us a lot

On Tuesday I posted, New York Times silent on Annan’s Mercedes anger outburst, but others report it.

At a recent news conference U. N. secretary-general Kofi Annan lashed out at Times of London reporter James Bone for questioning him about a Mercedes purchased in Annan's name in Switzerland under questionable circumstances. The vehicle was then shipped to Ghana, where it disappeared.

In its press conference story, the New York Times never mentioned the Mercedes. But other news organizations, which have been reporting the story for months, had plenty to say.

And today, the New York Sun has an editorial, Follow That Car:

The tantrum with which Secretary General Annan greeted the now famous question about the missing Mercedes Benz tells us a lot about the tensions that are building at the United Nations.
...
The Mercedes Benz, described as a "sporty green" Jeep-type vehicle, is missing somewhere in Africa, and Mr. Annan, his son Kojo, and their army of spokesmen and lawyers, just don't seem to want to answer questions about: What happened to that car? Who owns it? Where is it parked?

The September 7 report of the Independent Inquiry Committee headed by Paul Volcker has it that the car was bought in Geneva in the fall of 1998, just as the goods-inspection company Cotecna was about to land a fat contract with the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. Cotecna at the time employed Mr. Annan's son, Kojo. The secretary general contributed $15,000 toward the purchase of the car. Another contributor was a Cotecna official and a family friend of the Annans, Michael Wilson, who paid a $3000 deposit. Kojo Annan paid the rest.

There's a lot more before the Sun concludes:

(Mr. Annan’)...bullying...backfired, and reporters are now more interested than ever in the story of the missing Mercedes.

Not all reporters.

A search of the New York Times archives using entries "Kojo Annan" and "Kojo Annan + Mercedes" and "Annan + Mercedes" reveals only one mention of the Mercedes. It's in a September 7 story by Warren Hoge (Annan Failed to Curb Corruption in Iraq's Oil-for-Food Program, Investigators Report).

In one incident, (Volcker) said, Kojo Annan bought a new Mercedes using his father's name, which yielded him a diplomatic discount and enabled him to import the vehicle to Ghana without paying import duty.

Other than that single sentence, the New York Times appears to have reported nothing about Annan's Mercedes, not even that it's now missing.

The Times' silence on this matter is awfully loud.

Suppose instead of Annan and his son we had Vice-president Cheney and his daughter getting a special tax break on a Mercedes partially paid for by a Halliburton executive just before the car was shipped to Texas and disappeared.

You know the kind of news coverage the Times would be giving a Cheney/Halliburton missing Mercedes story, to say nothing of its editorials.

But about what Annan, his son, and an executive and company involved in the U. N. oil-for-food scandal did and didn't do with the Mercedes, the Times has been silent for months.

The Times' silence sure tells us a lot about its claim to report the news “regardless of party, sect, or interest involved.”